


Game Change

by redcandle17



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 18:50:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4030777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcandle17/pseuds/redcandle17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa travels to King's Landing on behalf of House Stark to answer a summons from the queen and finds that Daenerys has great changes in store for Westeros.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Game Change

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for round 12 of GoT_Exchange for someone who wanted to read about Westeros moving away from absolute monarchy.

The last time Sansa Stark had traveled this way, she’d been a little girl betrothed to a golden prince, an innocent who thought all her dreams were about to come true. Instead she’d found herself in a nightmare that had lasted years. She was a woman grown now and much wiser in the ways of the world - and in the ways of kings and queens.

Westeros had had three years of peace. Three years to rebuild what had been destroyed in the wars between the kings and in the Great War against the Others. Queen Daenerys had troubled the North little in this time. Then five moons ago a raven had brought a summons. The Queen commanded the attendance of the Starks of Winterfell at court. There was to be a tourney, too, but the letter had made it clear - to Sansa, at least - that the tourney was of secondary importance.

The foremost of Winterfell’s bannermen had also been summoned to King’s Landing. And while Old Lord Manderly pleaded age and infirmity and sent his son Ser Wylis in his stead by ship, Lady Mormont and Lord Umber insisted on travelling with Sansa. Well, that was not quite accurate. Lord Umber rode ahead and Lady Mormont rode behind, and both had set men loosely circling Sansa’s party to ward from attack. Though Sansa was well protected even without their efforts; Sandor had chosen each of the hundred guardsmen who accompanied her.

And then there was Arya. Her sister was more warrior than lady and no one who met her could think otherwise. It wasn’t simply because she wore a sword on one hip and a dirk on the other; it was in her eyes and in the way she moved. She was _dangerous_. Sansa never knew who to fear for more when Arya and Sandor sparred.

“I thought you might like these.”

Sansa had been brushing her hair whilst her maids busied themselves cleaning the day’s dust from her clothes and preparing her supper. She had not seen or heard Arya enter the tent, but Arya was good at not being seen or heard until she chose to be. She set a handful of colorful wildflowers down on Sansa’s little camp bed.

Sansa recalled the flowers Arya had gathered for their father as they rode through the Neck on their way south all those years ago. Lord Eddard had smiled at Arya and thanked her, but Sansa had been furious that her little sister had gotten herself covered in mud wading into the swamp water for the flowers. She remembered how afraid she’d been that Queen Cersei might see Arya muddy and think Sansa, too, was wild and not fit to wed Prince Joffrey. _If I’d known then what I know now, I would have thrown myself into the mud and wallowed like a pig and even thrown mud right at Joffrey’s face._

“Arya, I-” _I’m sorry._ They had exchanged a hundred tearful apologies since reuniting after the wars. “I thank you. They’re beautiful.”

Arya laid down on her own bed. “I’ve heard whispers that the queen intends to have us killed. Not just _us_ , all the lords and ladies of the realm.”

“I’ve heard the same whispers.”

Sansa had grown up believing the reign of King Robert was a good one. The Seven Kingdoms had been at peace, save for Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion, which the king had put down quickly. She knew now that it was Jon Arryn who had kept the realm at peace - though he could not keep the king from spending the crown into massive debt - and that her lord father and Lord Stannis had done as much to quell the Ironborn rebellion as Robert’s famed hammer. Daenerys Targaryen was no worse a queen than Robert Baratheon had been a king, and, in fact, she was better by many measures. The royal treasury was full, thanks to thriving trade with her allies and client cities in the East, and she had commanded the Citadel to double the number of maesters they trained so that in time more would be available to tend to and educate even smallfolk.

“It might be that Daenerys has become as mad as Mad King Aerys,” Sansa said. “Or it might be that someone wishes us to believe she has.”

Sometimes rumors were just rumors, just idle talk to fill the time. And sometimes rumors were poison, lies deliberately spread for the benefit of some schemer. Sansa had learned that from Littlefinger. Littlefinger was dead now, but might there be another ambitious little lordling no one would suspect of sowing treachery until it was too late?

“Well, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open,” Arya said. “If I can see and hear past the bloody suitors.” Then a thought made her brighten. “When they see me, far fewer of those southron lordlings will want to wed me still.”

At eighteen and sixteen, Sansa and Arya were at an age when most highborn women married. That they were the only known surviving legitimate siblings of a boy lord ensured that they were in high demand as brides, and scarcely a week passed without a raven or a rider delivering a marriage proposal to Winterfell.

Arya narrowed her eyes at her. “You, however, once they see you… Winterfell will be besieged with singers sent to sing love songs at you.” She snickered. “Your mangy old dog will be beside himself with jealousy.”

As little girls, Sansa had been almost convinced that Arya was a changeling. She had bore so little resemblance to their beautiful lady mother, unlike Sansa herself and Robb and Bran and Rickon. But she had grown to possess a great beauty of her own, though she did not seem to care.

“You’ll have plenty of admirers of your own, sister.”

“Mayhaps,” Arya allowed. She drew her slender sword and lightly traced her finger along the blade. “Until they see me use this.”

“They’ll compose songs about what a brave and beautiful warrior maid you are,” Sansa teased.

Arya snorted.

Sansa wondered whether Arya would allow her to brush and braid her hair, but she decided not to press her luck tonight. Instead she set her mind to thinking of the things that might happen at this great gathering and what she might do to keep Winterfell and the North safe. They had some weeks yet to go before they arrived in King’s Landing and she wanted to be ready for every contingency.

 

The Stark party arrived in King’s Landing to find the streets thronging with excited smallfolk. The crowd seemed happy, not angry, but a queasy feeling began in Sansa’s tummy. Sometimes she still dreamt of that awful riot. She wished Sandor was here with her. But when she realized she’d unthinkingly urged her mare nearer to Arya’s gelding, she chided herself. She was not a helpless little girl anymore and Daenerys Targaryen was not Joffrey. Her great black dragon could roast this whole city in an afternoon; the mob would not dare to attack their betters under her rule. Nor, to the best of Sansa’s knowledge, would Queen Daenerys give them cause to riot, as the Lannisters had.

Still, it seemed rather strange. She might expect such a welcome in villages in the North or in the riverlands, but not here. The people of King’s Landing had no special love for the daughters of Eddard Stark and Catelyn Tully.

But as they left the Street of Sisters and turned onto the road that would take them up Aegon’s High Hill to the Red Keep, the cause for the crowd’s exuberance became clear. Servants in the livery of Highgarden were giving free fruits and flowers to lucky smallfolk. Sansa surmised that a Tyrell or two had arrived in the city at the same time and were now putting on a spectacle as they made their way to answer the Queen’s summons.

She had not seen Margaery since the night Joffrey had been poisoned at his wedding feast. It had been the bride’s family who’d poisoned the king, but the blame had fallen onto the Imp and Sansa. She wondered what to say if they should meet. She knew better than to trust Margaery or any Tyrell now, but she could not bring herself to be angry with them.

Arya commanded their people to quicken their pace, so that they would be ahead of the Tyrell party. “It wouldn’t be right that we ride behind them,” she sniffed to Sansa. “Starks were kings back when Tyrells were only stewards.”

Sansa smiled. Arya had always been heedless of differences in rank and she tended to treat peasants like friends and princes like peasants, but she was fiercely proud of House Stark.

The guard Sansa had quietly sent to lay eyes on the Tyrells caught up with them halfway up the hill and reported that it was Willas Tyrell and some lesser cousins who had come. His sister had stayed home, it would seem. Sansa thought that was a very canny decision. The Queen of Thorns was dead, but she had taught her grandchildren well. It had not been so long ago that Margaery had been a queen in this city, beloved by the commons. There would surely have been a certain awkwardness in her presence in the dragon queen’s court.

Then the Red Keep loomed before her and all thoughts of the Tyrells of Highgarden fled. Sansa had not been back here since she’d escaped.

She had not wanted to come. She’d been a prisoner within those walls for over a year. She had been beaten and humiliated in this place. She had been made to gaze upon her father’s severed head, had been stripped naked in public, had been forced to wed a dwarf, had lived in fear and loneliness as first a hostage and then as a trophy intended to bear Lannister spawn against her will. Sansa had never, ever wanted to see this wretched place again.

But she’d known she had to come. Rickon was only a little boy and still unlearning wilding ways, and Arya was thoroughly unsuited to matters of fealty and diplomacy. She had drawn on all her strength and the memory of her parents. _Winter is coming_ were the words of her father’s House, and _Family, Duty, Honor_ the words of her mother’s. It was spring now, but winter would come again one day, as it always did, and it was her duty to make sure the Starks were prepared.

“I’m sorry I left you here with _them_ ,” Arya whispered to her. She looked very sad.

Sansa chastised herself for not concealing her fear better. “You were only a little girl,” she replied. “You were lucky to escape yourself. And fool that I was, I wanted to be here.”

She did not want to be here now, but she was a Stark of Winterfell and her mother’s daughter. Sansa urged her mare forward and passed beneath the raised portcullis into the Red Keep.

 

She slept soundly the first night, tired after the journey and formally greeting the Queen and court. But her second night within the confines of the Red Keep, Sansa awoke convinced Joffrey and his Kingsguard were coming to hurt her. A long, terror-filled moment passed before she remembered that she was no longer little girl and this was not her cell atop the highest tower in Maegor’s Holdfast.

Queen Daenerys had invited the members of the seven Great Houses to stay in the Maidenvault as her personal guests. It was a honor they’d had no choice but to accept, since declining the queen’s hospitality was both ungracious and unwise. However there was not enough space for the high lords and ladies and all of their entourages and soldiers. Only the nobles, their personal attendants, and a small honor guard were permitted within the Red Keep. Sansa had had to send most of her men to camp outside the city where other lords and knights who’d come for the tourney had raised a small city of tents along the tourney grounds.

If the dragon queen meant her harm, it would make little difference whether she had four guards or four hundred, but Sansa felt vulnerable without the protection of her northmen. Perhaps she ought to have brought Sandor with her as her shield as he’d wanted and as everyone had expected. She remembered how brazenly Prince Oberyn of Dorne had brought his lover to court with him. But Oberyn Martell had been Dornish and a man; Sansa was neither. She’d deemed it prudent to leave her Hound home.

_I would have felt much better with him beside me, though, and it would have been exciting to have him take me within these walls. How Joffrey’s ghost would have raged!_

She entertained herself with such imaginings for a while, but nothing would help her sleep again tonight. She pulled a plain linen gown over her shift and went next door to the chamber that had been given to Arya, but her sister was not there. Sansa was not surprised. She was glad she’d made Arya promise not to kill anyone important while they were here.

“M’lady, it is the hour of ghosts,” said one of her guards, when she turned to descend the stairs instead of returning to her bed chamber.

“Indeed it is, Tom,” she replied.

He began to follow her, but Sansa commanded him to stay back. “Guard my sister’s sleep, and our belongings; the gods will guard me.”

“But m’lady…”

“That is my command,” she said gently.

Poor Tom looked ready to weep, but he stayed put. Sansa doubted they’d ever realize Arya was also out of their protection.

The Red Keep was quiet and still at this hour. Sansa saw no more than a handful of sleepy servants and bored watchmen as she wandered. Candles burned in the sept and Sansa lit a few more for her mother and father and lost brothers. The yard where Joffrey had held his meager name day tourney was now occupied only by a bitch and her pups. She looked up warily as Sansa passed by and Sansa wished she had some food to give her. She looked hungry and there was a bloody bald patch where someone had hurt her.

Sansa’s feet led her to the only place within the Red Keep where she’d ever felt remotely safe. Though the godswood here was much smaller than Winterfell’s godswood, it seemed like a vast forest in the light of the half moon. She found the weirwood tree she’d planted earlier that day and knelt before it.

It was only a sapling. She’d seen it in a dream and heard a familiar voice whispering to her, and when she’d come across a grove of new weirwoods while riding in the wolfswood days before she began her journey south, she’d known what she had to do.

Queen Daenerys plainly thought it was an odd sort of gift, and perhaps it was not as exciting as exotic beasts or as valuable as sparkling gems the size of a man’s fist, but the queen had graciously accepted the North’s humble gift and allowed it to be planted within her godswood. Sansa had put it into the earth with her own hands.

She reverently stroked the pale bark now. “Sink your roots deep and grow tall,” she whispered. She imagined it growing and growing until its top could not be seen and its branches shaded the whole city.

“I thought it might talk.” Someone shuffled out of the darkness and into sight of the moonbeam that shone in the little clearing. “The heart tree in Winterfell, it talked to me. _He_ talked to me. Bran. I thought he might talk to me here tonight. There are no weirwood trees on the Iron Isles, hardly any trees of any kind.”

Sansa felt only pity as she looked at Theon Greyjoy. She should hate him as Arya did. If he had not betrayed Robb and seized Winterfell, the Bastard of Bolton would not have been able to burn the castle and murder its people. But it was clear that Theon had suffered a great deal for his crimes. He was a broken shell of a man, a puppet lord propped up in Pyke while his sister ruled in truth.

“Bran is with the old gods of our father,” Sansa said. “Why should you want to talk to the old gods? Your people worship a god of the sea.”

“The Drowned God.” Theon gave a little laugh. “But Winterfell is so far from the sea, isn’t it? Asha told me that, warned me, but I didn’t listen. But the old gods of the North spoke to me. They spoke to me in Bran’s voice. They knew I was sorry. They forgave me. They helped me.”

It was plain his mind had been damaged as well as his body. But who better than she knew the desperate comfort one could find in a godswood or sept when one had nothing else?

“Then I pray they speak to you again, Theon.” She rose and dusted her skirts clean of leaves and dirt. “Be well.”

Sleep came easily when she returned to bed. Her dreams were more pleasant, too, though she could not remember them later. She woke well-rested and ready for anything. And a good thing too.

 

Sansa tried not to look as apprehensive as she felt. Daenerys Targaryen seemed like a good and kind woman and queen. She probably wasn’t going to feed them to her dragon. But Sansa really wished the dragon queen had not insisted the great lords and ladies leave behind their guards.

The others seemed unconcerned, however. Asha Greyjoy laughed and jested while Theon rode beside her silent but looking no more frightened than usual. Prince Trystane of Dorne brooded moodily while his bastard cousins Nymeria Sand and Sarella Sand tried to engage him in conversation with the Queen. Harry Arryn kept trying to flirt with the Dornishwomen, despite having a wife at home, proving that Sansa had been right not to marry him. Sansa’s great-uncle Brynden Tully was pointing out things of interest to his pregnant young Bracken wife, though Tyrek Lannister seemed to be listening more intently than poor Bess, who was afflicted with mother’s stomach.

Only Shireen Baratheon seemed wary and Sansa suspected her wariness had more to do with Willas Tyrell than the Queen. Lady Shireen was rather shy and seemed unsure how to respond to Willas’s gentle overtures. _If they marry, their eldest son would be heir to both Storm’s End and Highgarden. He would control half the south. Is that the Tyrells’ design here?_

“Isn’t that so, niece?”

Sansa hadn’t the faintest idea what her great-uncle had been speaking of. “If you say it is so, it must be so,” she replied.

The Blackfish laughed, clearly undeceived. “What steals your thoughts away from us?”

Sansa couldn’t confess her true thoughts, not here and now. Daenerys spoke with her foreign shields in their own languages, but the foreign men must surely have learned some of the Common Tongue of Westeros these three years past. “I was thinking that the Queen seems to think little of our Westerosi knights, aside from good Ser Barristan.”

“Can you blame her? Her Dothraki riders and her eunuchs have followed her across the world loyally, while she has not forgotten that it was a knight of her father’s Kingsguard that took his life.”

“But Ser Barristan…”

“Is one man. I do not think the rest of our realm has made an overly good impression on the queen.”

“Perhaps she was told the same stories I was told as a girl,” Sansa mused. “Perhaps she expected it all to be better.”

“Perhaps so,” the Blackfish agreed, smiling sadly.

Sansa couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt. Great-uncle Brynden was famous for refusing to marry. He had quarreled with his brother, her lord grandfather, for many years over the matter. But her uncle Edmure had been killed while attempting to escape imprisonment at Casterly Rock and his pregnant Frey wife had been killed by outlaws along with the rest of her evil family. The Tully line would have died with Brynden if he had not taken a young bride and began siring children.

There had been another way. By Andal law, Lady Catelyn’s children inherited ahead of the Blackfish. But Rickon was Lord of Winterfell and had no interest in anything south of the Neck, and Sansa…

The riverlands were impossible to defend. It could be raided by seafarers from either coast, could be attacked along any point of its vast southern border with the westerlands, Reach, and crownlands. Its defenders could probably hold off an invasion force coming down from the Neck, but that was the one direction from which they did not need to worry about attack, not in their lifetime. Sansa would have had to worry constantly if she’d become the Lady of Riverrun.

And she would have had to take a suitable husband.

“Your Grace,” Willas Tyrell was saying. “It is magnificient.”

Sansa had visited the Dragonpit when she’d first come to King’s Landing with her father. It had been a ruin then, a rubble of massive rock and fallen pillars. She had not been able to imagine the terrible rage that had made it possible for mere men and women, mere smallfolk, to destroy in days what it had taken Aegon the Conqueror years to build.

What stood before her now was no ruin. The Dragonpit had been rebuilt, and it was awe-inspiring. It was a worthy home for the queen’s great black dragon. Sansa told her so.

“This is not for Drogon. He prefers to sleep beneath the open sky - and what mother could deny her only surviving child?” Daenerys sounded as sad as if her fallen dragons had truly been her children, but secretly Sansa was glad. One such beast in the world was enough.

“This is for you,” the Queen said.

For one horrible moment Sansa was afraid the Queen meant to imprison them. A grand prison it would undoubtedly be, but a prison all the same.

“I have tried to be a good queen,” Daenerys said, and Sansa understood now why she’d insisted that the members of the seven Great Houses of Westeros come without their entourages. She was speaking as Daenerys the woman rather than as the Queen.

“You will have heard how I took cities in the East only to free their slaves. I tried to do good. But what seems to be good so often causes unforeseen ill later. I have spoken with maesters and read their books. I know of the good and the bad the kings and queens before me did.” She looked across the bay to the kingswood as if sensing the great roar that sounded a heartbeat later.

Sansa was glad all over again that she lived so far away from the dragon. How terrible it must be to hear the dragon roar every day and see it flying overhead breathing flame.

“I have concluded that no one man or woman knows best for the realm.”

“And that is why you have a Small Council, Your Grace,” said Nymeria Sand.

“A council of councillors with their own interests, weighing grudges against favors instead of arbitrating justice. Even the Grand Maester and the High Septon.”

“Such is human nature, Your Grace,” said Asha Greyjoy. “Every man - and every woman - everywhere in the world is the same in this regard.”

“Yes,” Daenerys agreed. “But I hope that if I gather every lord in the realm together, then all they’d have in common is the realm and they’d have to do good by it.”

“Then Your Grace truly has called us here for a Great Council?” asked Arryn.

“Not _a_ Great Council, the first of a grand council that will meet every year hereafter. After the tourney, I shall convene every lord and landed knight of note, along with representatives from the Citadel, the Faith, the Night’s Watch… and the guilds.”

That was a surprise on top of a surprise. Sansa would not have thought the guilds important enough to warrant a say in matters of the realm. They were only commoners. _How many lords will listen to what a merchant or a smith has to say?_ Impoverished lords sometimes married the daughters of wealthy merchants for a generous dowry, but such families were seen as mildly disgraced. The Westerling girl her brother Robb had married had been from such a family.

“You should let the village headmen have a say too,” Arya declared. “Most their lords don’t know what’s best for them and the guilds only care about rich people in the cities. Nobody listens to the farmers and villagers in the countryside.”

“I cannot have tens of thousands of village elders in the council,” Daenerys said. “But some day we shall figure out how to give the peasants their say.”

Sansa was speechless and she could see that the others were astonished too. Except Arya, and Sarella Sand, who was nodding and studying the queen as if truly seeing her for the first time.

“Well,” Asha Greyjoy said. “This will be a kick in the balls to all the lordlings and greenlander knights who think you’ve assembled them to have your pick of them.”

The Queen seemed both amused and exasperated. “You may have heard that I will choose another husband at this tourney. That is not so.”

Then the dragon queen’s countenance became deadly serious. “Some of you may have heard that I will be naming Lady Shireen as my heir.” She was looking at Willas Tyrell as she spoke. “That is so.”

Sansa didn’t understand why. Daenerys was a young woman, only two years older than Sansa herself. She had many years in which to bear many children. _I suppose if some accident or illness befell the queen before she had a child, it would be good to have a clear line of succession to prevent everyone from fighting for the Iron Throne again._

“Lady Shireen will wed Prince Trystane,” the Queen announced.

Trystane’s brother had been killed by one of the queen’s dragons in the East, and his sister had died as the bride of the short-reigned pretender Daenerys had named ‘the Mummer’s Dragon.’ And, according to Sansa’s maid, who’d heard it from a Martell guard, the prince still mourned the loss of his golden princess. _Myrcella was a good princess even if her brother and her mother were monsters. I’m glad she had the love of a kind prince even though it was only for a short time. Surely he will come to love Shireen as he loved Myrcella, despite her face._

“I wish you every happiness together,” Sansa told the betrothed pair.

“Well, my lords and ladies,” Daenerys said. “Do you have anything to say to me?”

They all offered pleasantries and compliments, but the queen waved them away impatiently. “Then our business is concluded for now. Let us return to the castle.”

_It was said that Targaryen greatness and Targaryen madness were two sides of the same coin. I wonder what the maesters writing history books many years from now will have to say of Daenerys._

This new state of affairs the Queen meant to implement was something Sansa had not foreseen, had not imagined possible. It would certainly change everything.


End file.
